Adobe’s Latest Creative Suite Floats Into the Cloud

Today, the creative production software giant Adobe is taking the wraps off the latest version of its huge collection of products — collectively known as Creative Suite 6, or CS6 — at an event in San Francisco that is being streamed live on the Web.

The applications are usually expensive, and often prohibitively so, for the people who want to use them the most: $2,000, give or take, is a lot to invest for, say, a freelance Web and graphic designer. And this has fact encouraged more than a bit of software piracy as a result.

Today’s launch provides a new answer to that problem. Having previously unveiled subscription applications that run in a browser — I’m thinking specifically of the one I’ve used a little, called Photoshop Express — Adobe says it will launch a cloud-based version of its entire creative suite of applications. That includes InDesign, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Photoshop and the rest. It’s being called Create Cloud, and the price is $49.99 a month with an annual contract. Members will have access to download and install every new Adobe CS6 application, including two new ones, Adobe Muse and Adobe Edge Preview.

The service integrates Adobe’s creative tablet applications, including Photoshop Touch, into the daily workflow. Files used in one place can be accessed from any device. Mobile apps that users build can be quickly offered up to Apple’s iTunes or Google’s Android Marketplace.

Creative Cloud members will also get access to upgrades to the applications before they’re generally introduced into the main creative suite; they’ll also get early access to new products.

Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen, who spoke last year at the ninth D conference, went on CNBC this morning to talk about the cloud service. I’ve embedded the video below:

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